Chapter 1, Part 2

Vagabond

            He continued retching long after his stomach was empty. His entire body, so unused to this…normal…state, after a lifetime in ecstatic frenzy, had no other way to react. The dreamer had been torn from the dream, violently, and without regret.

            Regret. Now that was a word he knew very well.

            Not that he paid attention to it. It was like navigating a maze of knives. Provide you didn’t throw yourself against the walls, it was simplicity itself to avoid getting hurt.

            Hurt, of course, was another word he knew very well. And there was no avoiding this one. No, that’s a lie. Of course there was…is.

            Feebly, using his monstrous arms as pillows, he slowly leaned forward onto the ceramic of the commode, it’s razor-sharp coolness ping-ponging across his nerves. It’s not that he was about heave—his body finally understood the futility—he was just…so…tired. Which made perfect sense, if you knew the man. What he had been through. What he had done.

            It was only when he felt the pangs of his feet falling asleep did he move, and even then, it was just to slip to one side, and settled down upon one hip. There was so many things to be done, and the day was getting no shorter, but the idea of just staying there took on an undeniable allure.

            You know when you are tired enough and just about any position you find yourself in is the most comfortable in the world?

            Sounds of summer were flitting through the shut window, muffled, as was the light. It was a beautiful summer’s day. It was a beautiful day to die.

ROM, Miss Gwen, Scepter, & Pitch Black.

“…Manny?”

            “I’m awake!” He sat bolt upright, his glasses, having popped off his ears when he was face-down, flying across the room.

            Guinevere came to the blind man’s side while Romeesha picked up the shades. “How is he?”

            Still a little dazed, Manny blinked, his glaucus-white eyes, sightless as they were, stinging. He had fallen asleep on his nose at Kit’s bedside, the reassuringly monotonous pinging of the heart monitor lulling him into dreams. Two days of constant telepathy, and still nothing. “No change,” he sighed, defeatedly. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

            “Here yo’ glasses, Doc,” Romeesha said, putting the shades in his had, the tenderness in her voice off-setting her gangsta twang.

            “Thanks.”

            Romeesha’s eyes drifted to Kit. “So fucked, seeing somebody like him like this.”

            Guinevere put her arms around the other woman. It was comforting, but uncomfortingly helpless. In terms of sheer strength, blow for blow, Kit could probably take even Danilo down. He was Kazuhito “Kit” Kitabora, professional bodybuilder, for crissakes. At any given time, he was in at least two muscle mags. He should be slinging weights, or playing country songs on his guitar, or stopping the conversation dead in its tracks by being a Japanese man with a Tennessean accent. He should not in an ICU. Seeing him now, like this…it wasn’t right. Vagabond…

            “You getting’ anything from him?” Romeesha went on.

            Manny shook his head. “No. Nothing conscious. It’s like…paralysis. It’s like the lights are on but nobody is home.”

            “What does the hospital say?” Guinevere asked. Manny could here the musical lilt of Trinidad in the woman’s voice.

            Manny sat back in his chair. “They have no idea. Clearly Kit’s in a coma, but they have no idea why, of course. Everything is working fine: heart, lungs, kidneys. But he’s completely unresponsive. They even stuck him with a pin, to see if he was faking it. Now they’re talking some sort of chemical shock or psychosomatic break.”

            Guinevere closed the door. “I don’t think they’d buy it, if we told them.”

            “I still don’ know what Vagabond did to him,” Romeesha muttered. “Damn psycho.”

            The man rubbed his temples. “Even I don’t know for sure.” He could empathically sense their dismay at that, and he quickly explained. “Kit is here. I can feel him. It’s hard to explain. It’s like he’s a computer that’s frozen up. I can get in so far, and then I run into something. Nothing I do can get through. I’m pressing all the buttons, but nothing is working. It’s not like a block or shield, although it may as well be. And it’s not like his mind was blasted out of his brain, although Vagabond could do that. Remember, we were just in his way. We interrupted him. He wasn’t trying to kill us, just get rid of us.”

            “’Not trying to kill us?’” Guinevere repeated, incredulous.

            “You wanna put money on ‘dat?” Romeesha asked.